Legendary musician David Byrne is back on the road in support of his latest release, Who Is the Sky?, hitting San Francisco for a whopping three nights at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. With no opener, the fans streamed into auditorium and took their seats promptly, resolved to not miss a single note.
A vibrant IMAX style screen that curved around the sides and rear of the empty expanse of a stage, projecting a moon scape as Byrne and a trio of musicians stepped our to center stage and launched into the Talking Heads’ “Heaven” as planet earth rose behind them. For the most part the crowd initially remained in their seats but “And She Was” (another Talking Heads classic) finally got them on their feet and dancing along. And while the newer songs gave folks a chance to rest their feet, there were a huge numbers of people that were clearly fans of a broad swath of Byrne’s catalog and had no need for a chair at all.
On stage, Byrne was joined by a troupe of dozen musicians, dancers and backup singers and not a cable in site. This allowed the performers to make full use of the stage while the massive screens served up a few surprises. Between songs, David chatted up the crowd story-teller style, at one point sharing pictures of quilts from his visit to Berkeley Art Museum earlier in the day and sharing a 3D view of his NYC apartment as he teed up “My Apartment Is My Friend.” While Byrne appeared well-attuned to the love from the San Francisco crowd that hung on every word, he did stop a song to ask someone in the front row to put their phone away, ironically just before launching into the lyrics, “Don’t be like that, But don’t be so mean.”
For those not familiar with the newer material and came hoping to hear some Talking Heads classics, they most certainly walked away satisfied with Byrne dedicating about half of his set to updated compositions of the classics from early in his career. But while the songs might have been refreshed, the message from songs like “Life During Wartime” remain as relevant as ever … which Byrne took the opportunity to emphasize by projecting images of ICE violence in Chicago, Los Angels and New York on the screens, resulting in an expected reaction from the SF crowd.
The encore wrapped appropriately with “Burning Down the House” and another reminder about how little has changed since that song was released over 45 years ago!
